A. Purus River

The missionary chronicles of the Augustinian Recollects in Casanare and Tumaco (Colombia), in Kweiteh (China), in Palawan (Philippines), in Chota (Peru) or Bocas del Toro (Panama), may speak indifferently of rivers or seas, paved roads or dusty dirt roads; but it is impossible to read a missionary chronicle from Lábrea in which the Purús River does not appear.

If you look at the map of the Prelature, you will see that a river crosses it in its longest extension; It is the Purus. The missionary history of the Augustinian Recollects has many pages of heroism written on the Purús River; some are happy, satisfying; others sad, painful; but all glorious.

On its banks are the four parish centers and most of our people live there. All the missionary forays begin, end or are carried out in the waters of the Purús River.

The Purús river is born beyond the Brazilian borders, in Peru; it flows into the Amazon (Solimões), not far from the city of Manaus; and most of its journey happens within the borders of our Mission. When we missionaries, in speaking or writing refer to the river, we usually say our Purús.

It has 3,200 kilometers (I have already seen it ranked among the 15 longest rivers in the world), of which 2,500 are navigable by small and medium draft boats throughout the year, and large draft boats in the rainy months. Some 2,000 kilometers are within the Prelature of Lábrea. Its depth oscillates between 7 and 25 meters and its width, in front of Lábrea, around the middle of its course, has an average of about 500 meters.

The poet who is absorbed in the contemplation of fresh and crystalline streams, that drag the silver of their current through the greenery of the foliage, that jumping and playful glide quickly between the stones of their path, singing the song of the water and reflecting in its limpid mirror the blue of the skies, or the other who is carried away by the impetuous torrents that send down from the heights the torrent of their waters, wild colts crowned with manes of foam, that sing the hideous song of their fury between ravines and cliffs… Those poets, will find none of that in the contemplation of our Purús.

Its length and width, its depth and the color of its waters, its almost null unevenness of about three centimeters per kilometer, make it more like a huge snake that advances, lazily and silently, pushing the volume of its waters, dragging in its way large trees and true isles of roots, herbs and earth, while its ravines finally yield to the soft but constant kiss of its waters.

Despite the many, and some large, tributaries that flow into it, all with clear waters, its waters are cloudy, muddy, an unequivocal sign that it has not yet found its final bed.

They say it is the most sinuous and curvy river in the world. I don’t know if that is true, but that it has many curves, it does; it goes and goes in turns and more turns to, in as many others, return to pass very close to where it had already passed by hours ago. From a plane those curves and more curves present a wonderful spectacle; navigating through it, weariness, tedium and boredom assail the navigator, because so many twists and turns never end, feels like the end of the trip is never reached.

Its low unevenness makes navigation calm and almost safe. I have said almost safe, because its sands move from one trip to another, from one winter to another, it piles up in different places, causing serious danger to boats that may run aground.

The tree trunks nailed to its bed, the stones that sometimes emerge from the water and sometimes remain a few centimeters from the surface, are elements that constitute a real danger to the boats, making them even more dangerous because they are invisible. Only the keen eye of experienced navigators sees or guesses those dangers, even in the shadows of the night.

On its tour, it is possible to contemplate something of everything that, according to Humboldt, proclaims the greatness, power and tenderness of nature, from the snake capable of swallowing a horse, to the hummingbird that sways in the chalice of a flower.

On each side the exuberant jungle, of a green of all shades, trees of a thousand kinds, thick, tall, straight, that seem to support each other in their attempt, in their struggle to go up, towards the heights, in search of the sun, of the necessary light for them to live.

There the chestnut tree of tasty export fruits; there the sorba, rubber tree, which responds to the wound made in its trunk by the hand of man with the river of its milk; there the brazilwood, the macacaubá, rosewood, massaranduba that sink in water like lead, that resist the action of water eternally, the same as their brothers, quariquara, andiroba, piranheira, muratinga, murapiranga and a thousand more; there the samaúma, the queen of the jungle, who above all others exhibits her cup of cut and perfect profiles and who, knocked down by the weight of the years, drags down everything that comes before her upon her fall; there the slender palm tree that spreads the fan of its leaves to the sun…

And below all this, an exuberant, arbitrary and crazy agglomeration of trunks and branches stuck together, through which meanders in unexpected curves, in long swings, in repeated and fatal rings a whole world of vines, lianas, climbers and green parasites. that form a tangled network that not even the ray of the sun penetrates.

And among the branches of that jungle, guessed but not perceived, flocks of green parrots, macaws in whose plumage nature exhausted the full range of its colors, groups of happy, playful and restless monkeys that swing from the trees hanging from their retractable appendages, that scream, laugh, cry, that appear, mock and hide in sight and reach of the curious observer, fleeing from branch to branch, from tree to tree, with its classic and well-known agility.

And on its banks the “sad” jaburú with gray plumage or the slender heron with its long and resistant beak, with very long legs, which in the shallow waters of the river or in the neighboring ponds, wait eternal hours, motionless, for the unsuspecting little fish to settle putting itself within reach of its steely beak. Frightened by the passing boat, they will fly to quiet places, picking up the length of their necks to tiny dimensions and showing off the sapwood of their plumage, now highlighted by the green of the surrounding landscape.

There is also the screeching seagull that, flying at a certain height above the surface of the water, its eyes fixed on the mirror of the river, descends vertically and rapidly, until sinking its body in the water, emerging later, most of the time without, but sometimes, with the fish envisioned from above, which I don’t know if to better secure or play with it like a cat with a mouse, releases it in the air to catch it again in quick movements.

Or the fearsome alligator sunning its hard shell on a trunk or on the sand of the beach and dives into the water at the slightest danger glimpsed or guessed. Or the heavy turtle that returns from the beach where, at a depth of 50 centimeters, it will have laid 200 or more eggs that the sun will incubate.

And in the river itself, the botos, large freshwater dolphins, some gray, others pinkish, the latter larger than the former, who snort like bulls and who in groups, in rhythmic and measured movements of military or school formation, appear and disappear, in front, to the sides and behind the boats. Or the fearsome and voracious piranha, which with one bite takes away what its mouth encompasses, which even the metal hooks themselves manage to break.

And in the ravines, on the beaches, here and there, sometimes close to other times separated from each other, the little houses, the ranches of our simple and good people.

This is the Purús, our Purús, through which the spiritual and missionary life of the Prelature develops, and also, in all its aspects, the other life, commercial, communications, labor… All the rivers of the Mission , directly or indirectly, flow into the Purús; and through the Purús what we need or what we have left over, what we sell and what we buy comes and goes.

Poetic? I would say not. It is the eternal monotony, the eternal repetition, almost the eternal equality of the same things. Seen, traveled one of its laps, the thousand that make it up are seen. The same landscape, identical beaches and ravines, the same animals, similar houses, in an overwhelming and boring repetition.

Thousands of times the missionaries who have passed through there in the exercise of their missionary work have traveled it in both directions, who, transcending spiritual limits, became builders of schools and colleges, teachers of farmers, technicians and promoters of industries, founders of social works, all for the benefit of these people who always found in the missionary, initiatives and helped to develop them.

Many, the majority, have already paid it the tribute of their health and some with their own lives, such as Bishop Ignacio Martínez and Father Jesús Pardo.

On one occasion, I wrote to the Purus these lines:

It is ours

The most sinuous in the world, the third largest tributary of the king of rivers, and one of the fifteen largest in the world, is ours.

It is ours, because even though it was born in foreign lands and touring other regions, most of its uninterrupted travel is done within our Prelature.

It is ours, because it is the umbilical cord that unites us with the rest of the world. All the others lead us to it; and it, to the Amazon, to the sea, to the world outside.

It is ours, because it is the backbone around which the life of the Prelature and the Region develops in all aspects.

It’s ours. Everything we have left over goes through it to the outside and everything we need, through it reaches us.

It’s ours. On its fertile beaches, which it fertilizes with vegetable matter, when after great floods itreturns to its ordinary course; cassava, corn, beans, rice, the basic products of our diet, are born, grow and bear fruit.

It’s ours. Prodigal, it offers us day by day, the riches of its entrails, with the name of tambaquí, arapaima, cub, peacock bass, mandi, sardine and a thousand more species of richly flavored fish, also the basis of our daily livelihood.

It’s ours. Our missionary life develops in its waters and each of its innumerable turns undoubtedly has a story of ours to tell.

It’s ours. On the back of its waters always rides the fragile canoe of the missionary, bearer of the message of salvation.

It’s ours. Its ravines always echo the Eucharistic hymn of the missionary Mass, celebrated in a humble hut, which its waters kiss.

It’s ours. Always better than anyone and many times only it, witnessed our joys and sorrows, our tears and songs, our victories and defeats, our fatigues and our breaks.

It is ours. Its current drags our nostalgia and longing for the homeland, for the distant and beloved mother.

It is ours. It charged us and we paid the cost with the lives of some of our brothers.

It is ours. The name of Lábrea can never be pronounced, separated from its name, they are so identified! They complete each other.

It is ours. Road and granary, witness and silent and calm companion, deep and generous, although monotonous and muddy, it, the Purús, is ours.

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